


Beyond the Ice and the Fire

by Selkiessong



Series: Songs Re-sung [4]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, F/M, Past Character Death, Past Lives, Reincarnation, past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-16 02:32:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16076510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selkiessong/pseuds/Selkiessong
Summary: He’s twenty-six when he lurched awake, when he almost checks himself into a hospital because breathing is agony and something has to be seriously wrong. It’s the sickening sense of familiarity that stops him, the overwhelming déjà vu. In another time, another life, this was how he had died.





	Beyond the Ice and the Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Janina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Janina/gifts).



> For Janina- hope everything's somewhat back to normal at home and you have your gas working again.

      He’s twenty-six when he lurched awake, when he almost checks himself into a hospital because breathing is agony and something has to be seriously wrong. It’s the sickening sense of familiarity that stops him, the overwhelming déjà vu. In another time, another life, this was how he had died.  

He toyed with the idea of seeing someone before deciding against it.  _So, I watched this incredible firework display one night, and I woke up in a panic because I remembered standing in a room where men burnt alive bathed in the same shade of green. No, it wasn’t here; it was in some odd dystopian Medievalesque world complete with fire breathing dragons and ice zombies._ That would go really well, if he wanted to meet some nice men in white coats. _No, I’m not insane, I’ve just lived and died before._  Instead he wrote everything down, filling notebooks with his scribbles- because his handwriting’s still atrocious- separating him and other him as he calls his former self. Two lives, two realities.

 _I stood by and let horrible things happen to innocent people because when I protested everyone told me that I was the one who was wrong._ But in a world where “just following orders” was no excuse what did that make him? He had stood by and let a woman be brutally raped and innocent men and women burnt on a madman’s whim.

   Oddly enough, Bran Stark does not loom too large a figure in his mind, although maybe that was due to their meeting when he had sworn his sword to the North and offered his life in payment. _“I looked in the trees. I wanted to find the man who pushed me, the man who left me for dead. I wanted to kill you, but then I watched you over and over. I watched you sit in chains. I watched you forced to the ground and the sword fall on your hand. I watched as you fell from your horse, too weak to ride; watched you in the mud so desperately thirsty you drank horse piss. I watched you lose everything you were. I’m no longer interested in taking your life.”_ There had been no more mention of his crimes at Winterfell; it was tacitly acknowledged that his debt had been paid. But Sansa, God what had he done to Sansa? His family had been responsible for her suffering, and he had been selfish enough to love her, to accept her love with an open heart and open hands.

   He pointedly does not look for her. Assuming she’s also alive in this world he had been nearly twenty years her elder. She would be a child now, and he will not lust after a child, will not project his memories of an adult woman on her child counterpart. This is his one chance to make amends, to let her live her life away from all the pain he brought her, to let her be happy.

     Life, somehow, does go on after a rocky few months where he’s constantly dropping things because he’s used to not having a right hand and calling his mother first thing every morning to reassure himself that she’s still alive this time around. And Cersei. Cersei is his twin, that hasn’t changed; but here where their mother forces their father to be human, where she can divorce her alcoholic husband, where she is a force to be reckoned with on the DA’s staff, she’s not his Cersei. His Cersei would never have married Mace Tyrell of all people, although it seems to work because the man is whipped for her, would never have sat on the floor and played with her children; and he was finally able to lay the ghost of the bitter woman whose anger had burrowed into her like a cancer to rest and to mourn the girl he had fallen in love with when he still believed in knights. And if this Myrcella with honey eyes is his favorite, if he gives her all the latest books from the publishing company where he heads marketing what of it?

   It’s five years after that firework display and he’s content. No wife, no girlfriend because after stopping himself from calling Sansa’s name one too many times he gave up, and people have stopped trying to matchmake. Then, of course, _she_ walks in. Aleksandra Stark, twenty-seven years old, fresh off a hit debut novel, looking for a publisher. He knows her, of course he does. She looks the same, but he would know her blind. This is his Sansa with her soul of beauty and candle flame, and he’s going to be marketing her new book.

   This is his penance for his actions in another life, to be so close to her and yet never able to be with her, to have his heart break every time she walks by with her hair still smelling like lavender. Sansa’s haunted his mind for years. Now she haunts his body, and he wakes hard and aching from dreams where he worships her with his mouth and fingers, where he kisses along every her every battle scar, where she is beautiful and glowing with his child and he’s in awe that she lets him touch her, where she’s dark eyed and flushed with want. Seeing Sansa after those dreams is torture because he’s sure that she knows somehow, if her increasingly quizzical looks are any indication.

   _You tap your finger and bite your lip when you’re nervous. Lemon cakes are your favorite because you love the combination of tart and sweet._

_You threw me and Sam out of the room when you were in labor. You only wanted Gilly._

_You like sleeping in cold rooms with warm blankets. You always wake up curled around me or a pillow._

_You’re insatiable when you’re pregnant._

_You were the best part of my life. Our daughter was the greatest gift you could ever have given me. I used to stay awake at night holding you and marveling that you would ever love me._

   It’s not conducive to a professional relationship.

    Three months of close contact with Sansa left him exhausted at the end of each day, so when there’s a knock on his door one snowy night he’s only half aware of what he’s doing.

   “Jaime.” Sansa’s at his door with snowflakes in her hair just as he remembers her. “Jaime are you alright?”

    “No.” It slips out before he can catch it, but it’s the truth. Sansa’s standing in his doorway and he feels it like a physical pain. He wants her to leave so he can break down. He wants her to stay, to hold her so tightly that he can pretend they’re one person. “Just tired.”

   “I won’t be long.” She’s nervous with her finger tapping against her hand and her teeth worrying her lip. “I just wanted to let you know,” she started and he needs to shove his hands in his pockets because Sansa is looking at him with her soul in her eyes, and he’s this close to touching her, come what may and hell to pay. “I thought you should know you were right. I named her Joy like you asked. Eleni, Eleni doted on her little sister and Joy adored Eleni. I loved them for themselves, and I loved them because they were yours and they were all I had of you. “

   “ _Name her Joy. It’s what I want for you,”_ he had said as he was dying, and she remembers, she’s-

   “You’re real,” he whispers into her hair tasting salt on her face, knowing she tastes the salt on his. “It’s you.”

 

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_<https://www.pinterest.com/storiesandprettythings/beyond-the-ice-and-the-fire/>  _

**Author's Note:**

> Any thoughts? :) The link is for the Pinterest board for this story, but feel free to look around at anything that strikes you fancy :)


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